Weezer Finishes Its Album-Release Push, Tosses The Internet Aside

noah | June 17, 2008 9:00 am

When Weezer’s YouTube-“inspired” video for “Pork & Beans” initially came out, it had one unintentionally hilarious aspect: Its official version wasn’t embeddable, a policy that was in keeping with the semi-walled garden YouTube policies of the band’s major-label overlords, Universal Music Group, but seemed odd given that the whole point of the video was for it to become a meme and garner lulz from people who still think Tay Zonday is worth a chuckle. Shortly after this bit of cognitive dissonance was pointed out, Universal took the embed blocks off the clip, “Pork & Beans” hit it big on Digg, and all was well–until Weezer’s latest self-titled album got a sales beatdown from Disturbed on the album charts. (Aww.) Fast-forward to last night, when the Silicon Alley Insider noted that the clip’s no longer embeddable! What gives, man? I thought Weezer was for the geek-children!

Well, yes and no. It wouldn’t be surprising to find out that UMG had decided to quietly reblock the video once the run-up to Weezer was complete, not to mention that the album getting trounced by Disturbed, Usher, and a Now compilation may have been a sign that seven million views and a lot of Diggs don’t necessarily translate to album sales. So the time was right for Weezer to start making money off its music the old-fashioned way: From the banner ads running on the clip’s YouTube page. (How it took them this long to figure out that the self-proclaimed nerd elite is more into finding out which musicians look like old ladies than paying for music they allegedly like is a mystery to me.)

Anyway, those of you who can’t live without seeing Chris Crocker cry on your favorite blog needn’t fear, as the official version of the clip posted on French video-sharing site Dailymotion is still embeddable, just like other videos from the label. They really are more laissez-faire in France, aren’t they?

Who Pulled The Plug On Weezer’s “Pork And Beans” YouTube Video? [Silicon Alley Insider] Pork & Beans [YouTube] Weezer – Pork & Beans [Dailymotion]

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